Wall Street is considered to be the most ‘in the moment’ hedonistic field in the world. Most of the country characterizes people on Wall Street as extremely wealthy yet morally bankrupt. With that said, I’m curious, how many of you believe in any kind of afterlife? It can be anything. Any religion or personal dogma. Literally any thing that is consciousness following death.
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Yes, I’m going to purgatory to purge my sins first and then Heaven.
What is purgatory I know it’s catholic but never really researched it
Purgatory is one of the most controversial aspects of Catholicism as it is never specifically mentioned in the Bible. However, per the perspective of the Catholic church, its existence is heavily implied. The Bible says that no unpure soul can enter into Heaven. There are also other passages of the Bible which talk about being cleansed by fire and purified like silver before entering Heaven. Hence, Catholics believe that there must be an intermediate step between this world and heaven where you are fully purified and cleansed of your last earthly issues.
For example, let's say that you were a good person but had a drinking problem and weren't always nice when drunk. You didn't do anything deserving of hell, but God can't let mean drunks straight into Heaven. So you go to purgatory where you work through your remaining problems before entering Heaven. Some people may stay in purgatory a short period of time and some may stay there a very long time if they refuse to let go of these things. Very very few saint-like people will skip purgatory altogether and go straight to Heaven.
same ideally
Yes, I believe in Heaven and Hell. I'm not as fire and brimstone fearful as my parents are because my understanding is that God is genuinely loving and forgiving if one's heart and intentions are pure - even if and when they consistently sin. I don't know about purgatory or how I might be judged and asked to pay for my sins on this earth, but ultimately I do believe I'll be United with God in Heaven eventually.
What about people who have malicious / impure intentions (which we see often in Wall Street). What then do you believe will happen?
You're very much entitled to your belief system--God bless America for it. But, of course, your views are absolutely not Biblical Christianity.
That’s a pretty big assertion you just made as if I can’t find plenty scriptures that support that idea that God still loves us as sinners, especially considering that the entire point is that humans are innately flawed and must choose to live their life as close as they can to God’s standard - but will never reach it because none of us are Jesus Christ.
Curious to hear what part of my message isn’t supported by scripture, unless you’re projecting.
I hope there is but fear there’s nothing after
Right there with you
Absolutely no idea man
I don't know if I have a view on what the afterlife is like but I do believe there is one. More importantly, I am Christian and believe there is a God above. So I just try to live the best life I can and know that there is someone always looking out for me, that things are happening just as they should at all times. So when "the lights go out" for me, I trust that whatever after life comes - whatever it is, whatever it looks like - someone will be looking out for me too.
No
Had to make the joke.
Family is everything
I have always wanted to (mostly out of fear of nothingness), but I cant wrap my peanut brain around a man in the sky.
You are right that this is the way Wall Street is characterized. Yes, we are morally bankrupt - just like everyone else. If you don't think so, give your car mechanic a call this weekend and he'll find some way to screw you out of a $1,000.
Lots of people of all kinds in this industry. I'm personally Catholic and tithe every year. There's some people who wouldn't give a nickel to charity. It's a business that attracts all sorts of people. You just gotta choose what kind you will be.
badass, I've been starting to increase my charitable givings and am hoping to give more once my financial situation improves markedly.
Absolutely. Here’s a summary of the gospel to help you guys understand it and enjoy it and share it!
1) God created us for his glory.
“Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6–7). God made all of us in his own image so that we would image forth, or reflect, his character and moral beauty.
2) Therefore every human should live for God’s glory.
“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The way to live for the glory of God is to love him (Matthew 22:37), trust him (Romans 4:20), be thankful to him (Psalm 50:23), obey him (Matthew 5:16), and treasure him above all things (Philippians 3:8; Matthew 10:37). When we do these things we image forth God’s glory.
3) Nevertheless, we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him . . . and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Romans 1:21–23). None of us has loved or trusted or thanked or obeyed or treasured God as we ought.
4) Therefore we all deserve eternal punishment.
“The wages of sin is (eternal) death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Those who did not obey the Lord Jesus “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).
5) Yet, in his great mercy, God sent his only Son Jesus Christ into the world to provide for sinners the way of eternal life.
“God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
6) Therefore eternal life is a free gift to all who will trust in Christ as Lord and Savior and supreme Treasure of their lives.
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).
Honest question here, not trying to be disrespectful to your faith. Don't #'s 1-2 portray God as self-centered and egotistical? God was just trying to build out His glory a little bit more, so He created us, millions of beings built for the sole purpose of worshipping Him, and then sends us to hell if we don't?
I don't mean to be disrespectful either. But imagine a scenario where you're God, creator of the universe and the personification of all good and justice in that universe and you hear some ant complaining that you're egotistical and self-centered.
He must get a lot of laughs. Perhaps, that's why we're here....to entertain him with our foolishness into eternity.
Jokes aside. I can't begin to understand why God does what he does or why he even decided to create the universe. However, from what I can understand, he appears to be the essence of good and justice in this world, a protector of the downtrodden and the one who corrects all earthly wrongs amd injusticies in the end. That's enough for me. I'm not going to judge his character beyond that - I wouldn't dare to. Seems like a pretty swell guy, especially when he came down to Earth as Jesus. I trust that whatever He is doing, it is for the right reason.
No (unfortunately?)
I hope so
if your answer is yes, DM me, I have some magic beans to sell you
Magic is against the Catholic faith.
so walking on water, splitting sea in half, turning water into wine, birth without intercourse, and Noahs ark fitting all existing animals in pairs that marched in pairs from across the world is not magic
Hell no, I believe we will all close our eyes one day and return to the stars
You could argue that'a different kind of afterlife itself.
Very true, I just think we’re only conscious once. After that, we return to the universe in whatever disaggregated form of energy/ matter we came from.
I think religion takes on increased importance when folks start to think about marrying / raising a family. Many of the analysts truly are in a hedonistic phase of life, like you described, but I wonder if that has more to do with demographic and vocation. I notice that as bankers / investors mature and start raising kids, suddenly whatever minimal commitment they had towards religion deepens.
Yes. If you've ever built a complex financial model, imagine how hard it would be for that model to produce itself if you just banged on your keyboard in a random order. There was some intelligent design behind that model. Hard to imagine how human life could come about without similar intelligent design.
Good analogy.
Agree, and this is formally known as the watchmaker analogy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy
The counter is that lots of unimaginable things could happen over billions of years of time and tens of billions of light years of space
The counter is that we could expect lots of hard-to-imagine things might happen over the course of billions of years of time and across billions of light years of space. We just happen to live in one of these very unlikely pockets of space-time
The counter is that we could expect many “hard to imagine” events to transpire thru pure randomness over billions of years of time / across billions years of space
Any answer other than “I don’t know” is epistemic hubris. How can we conjecture about afterlife when we don’t understand the nature of this “reality” or what constitutes consciousness in the first place?
Disagree with the “epistemic hubris” point because part of the definition of believe is faith which can imply that you have, without conclusive evidence the idea that something will happen, regardless of whether you necessarily want it or not to happen. That’s much different than feeling entitled to an afterlife or in particular Heaven.
Yes, but isn’t “having faith” the same as “I don’t know” ?
As a Catholic, yes. What I do struggle with and need to read more about, is that I hope my friends of different faiths will be there too.
I've read that from the Catholic perspective, a search for a higher power can still save you even if you are from another faith. For example, let's say that you're born in India and you come to the realization that there appears to be a higher power that created the world and seeks to do good and justice. So you go searching for this higher power. You read up on Hinduism, you read up on Buddhism, maybe you even run across Christianity, but don't commit given your cultural background. However, if you keep searching for truth and that higher power and keep improving yourself, you can still be saved.
Where you can't be saved is the following scenario. You are born in India. You give zero shits about spirituality and want the best career, biggest house, and most money. You never search for a higher power. You put yourself at the center of the universe as the arbiter of what is good and what is bad. You never try to expand your spirituality and you perhaps even mock those who do. Such a person would be headed for the firey pit.
I'm not usually a quote guy, but this one popped into my head on this topic - "What we do in life echoes in eternity..."
One could argue that "heaven" is simply being remembered fondly after your passing while "hell" is the opposite. If you can be remembered fondly after your brief time on this earth, that has to be considered the ultimate success in life.
So, George Washington is in "heaven" and 99.9999999% of other people alive in 1780 are now in "hell"? What about those people who quietly do good things without anyone noticing? What about people who were secretly scumbags but no one knew about it?
Did I say anything at all about 99.99999% of people? You're asking questions like this is fact.
All I'm saying is I think the idea is that you should live a life that makes people miss you when you are gone.
No. There is no logic or evidence to support the idea, and it's a pernicious one anyway.
I'd rather focus on being a good person and making the world a better place, and leaving a positive legacy, than think about some eternal reward. It's just a way to abdicate moral responsibility and the difficulty of making your own choices, anyway. "Do what we tell you and you'll get your just desserts" is a dangerous thought process.
And Wall Street isn't any more morally bankrupt than any other industry or large group of people, they just have the wealthy and notoriety that it gets noticed, and handle enough money and are integral enough to the economy as a whole that their fuckups impact larger swathes of the country. Anyone trying to tell you that Group X is inherently worse than Group Y bears close scrutiny.
I don't believe that my personal identity and memories will survive death. I don't believe that I have a body, rather I think that I am a body. When my brain dies, I die too. Zip, gone, goodbye. However, there are some interesting ways in which an 'afterlife' may be true.
We could be living in an eternal cyclical universe. In that case, I will live this life (and an infinite number of variations of this life) over and over and over again. Nietzsche's eternal recurrence except not just a thought experiment.
There's also another idea I've toyed around with over the years. It is called generic subjective continuity. The idea is this - since birth you have been continually conscious. There may be periods that you can't account for - deep sleep, general anesthesia, etc. However, you did not 'experience' these gaps. After you die, other conscious beings will be born. Instead of expecting an 'experience' of oblivion or emptiness at death, you should expect to experience the sensation of having always been present experienced through a different context other than your own current context.
The below quote by Erwin Schrödinger helps explain.
"What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The conditions for your existence are almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light of the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else? What clearly intelligible scientific meaning can this 'someone else' really have? If she who is now your mother had cohabited with someone else and had a son by him, and your father had done likewise, would you have come to be? Or were you living in them, and in your father's father... thousands of years ago? And even if this is so, why are you not your brother, why is your brother not you, why are you not one of your distant cousins? What justifies you in obstinately discovering this difference - the difference between you and someone else - when objectively what is there is the same?”
After I die, I will not experience not being "I" yet other people will be born and be "I" to themselves in the same way that I am "I" to myself. In this sense, there is something almost eternal about conscious experience.
I assure you that I am not on magic mushrooms. This idea is very hard to explain. Would highly recommend Sam Harris' podcast #263 called "The Paradox of Death"
I love when people reject religion and then go on to explain their own random crackpot ideas while trying to sound sophisticated.
Side note: I greatly enjoyed watching a recent interview with Sam Harris talking about how it was ok to censor Trump ahead of the elections and hide the Hunter Biden story becuase of his politics. Here's a guy preaching about objective morality who wants to censure free speech because he thinks his politics are virtuous and the other guy is evil. If you can grasp how bad of a perspective that is for someone preaching a secular objective morality, it makes every argument he has ever made fall apart. In fact, it makes his viewpoints almost frightening in the worst totalitarian sort of way i.e. secular objectivity morality can be achieved and it means agreeing with my political party. YIKES!
Still more plausible than a personal God who creates an unimaginably large universe. On one small planet, he creates life which suffers through millions of years of birth, suffering, and death. Meanwhile he watches this with folded arms. Then, about 200,000 years ago, along come homo sapiens. God really cares about them. So much that he lets them suffer for at least a hundred thousand years until about 2,500-3,000 years ago he starts talking to one tribe in the Middle East. Then about 2,000 years ago, he sends his son, himself (as his son) to sacrifice himself to himself to save his creation from himself. And only if you believe this is true will you be physically resurrected at an undetermined date to live forever in a new heaven and a new earth. Everyone else is banished to the torments of hell.
This is laughable nonsense that people simply believe because they are either afraid of death or brought up in it from an early age.
And I don't really follow daily politics. Hunter Biden laptop was fishy AF and if Sam said that well then he's wrong. I don't love the politics part of his show. Still right about metaphysical questions though.
I believe that what you believe about the afterlife doesn't matter. Live a good life here and the next one...if there is one...will take care of itself.
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